Back in February, a blogger who went by the alias "DigDuality" got fed up with Microsoft's accusations of the open source community. And so, from work, he started a website that challenged Microsoft to find any IP violations *nix was making. May came, May went, and the website became about as active as an exhausted gold mine. Now, a few days into July, "DigDuality" has returned to his blog. He claims that Microsoft traced the website to DD's company, and that Microsoft threatened his company. The company, according to DD, then proceeded to give DD a choice: he could either keep the website running, or keep his job. DD preferred the latter, and so, the website has remained inactive for quite some time. DD refused to name the company that told DD to hold his tongue.

DigDuality was dragged into his manager's office, falsely accused of having a political agenda for his Open Sauce campaign and told if he didn't stop posting then he would be fired. In the end DigDuality kept his mouth shut until after he could find another job. Unfortunately he didn't name and shame the outfit.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter, since Linus pretty much echoed the same sentiments, i.e. "Show us the patents or shut the .... up. If we're infringing, we'll write around your stupid, trivial patents". Not in his words mind, but to that effect. This just shows how much he thinks of the claims, as usually he just shuts up so long as everything's easy for him - he's no political personality.

All Microsoft has done here is bought their resistance free publicity.